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American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians | June 12, 2019
Room Block Extended to June 26 for July Memphis Courses!
Join the specialty's top instructors on July 12-13 in Memphis for an in-depth course in Regenerative
Medicine.This is a course you won't want to miss!



JULY ABIPP EXAMS
AND COMPETENCY EXAMS
July 13 - July 14 | Memphis, TN

  ABIPP now offers the only competency certification program for regenerative medicine.

The American Board of Interventional Pain Physicians ( ABIPP ) has developed certification programs that recognize accepted levels of knowledge and expertise in the interventional pain management
profession, with the goal of improved patient care. Hundreds of qualified physicians have made the commitment to become ABIPP certified.
 
For complete information about the examination requirements and to obtain an application packet, visit www.abipp.org or call 270-554-9412. ext. 4217 or by email at summer@asipp.org.

July 13
ABIPP Part I
Combined CSM/CCPM Exam for ABIPP Path
Competency Exam in Controlled Substance Management
Competency Exam in Coding, Compliance, and
Practice Management

July 13-14
ABIPP Part II
Regenerative Medicine Competency Exam
Endoscopic Lumbar Decompression Competency Exam

July 14
ABIPP Competency Exam

939 Ridge Lake Blvd. | Memphis, TN 38120
 
The cut-off date for our room block with discounted rates is on June 10, 2019 or until sold out, whichever occurs first.
Medical marijuana does not reduce opioid deaths
 
Revisiting a 2014 study that suggested states with medical marijuana saw fewer opioid deaths, Stanford researchers in fact found no connection between marijuana availability and fatal opioid overdoses.
Legalizing medical marijuana does not reduce the rate of fatal opioid overdoses, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine
The finding contradicts a 2014 study that legal-pot advocates, public officials and even physicians have touted as a reason to legalize marijuana. That study found lower rates of fatal opioid overdoses in the states that had legalized marijuana for medical purposes than in states where marijuana remained illegal.


FDA Holds Hearing on Effects of Cannabidiol Products
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration took a good look at the safety and effectiveness of cannabidiol (CBD) products on Friday, as it weighs how to best regulate the hemp-derived compound going forward.
During a public hearing that stretched for hours, the agency heard testimony from parties on all sides of the issue. In opening the hearing, FDA Acting Commissioner Ned Sharpless, M.D., said, “critical questions remain about the safety” of the products, CNN reported. “While we have seen an explosion of interest in products containing CBD, there is still much that we don’t know,” Sharpless added.



A Judge Rules Against One Stem-Cell Clinic. There Are Hundreds of Them

In a long-sought victory for the F.D.A., a federal judge said officials have the authority to regulate stem-cell treatments made from patients’ own fat.

A judicial ruling this month that will stop questionable stem-cell treatments at a clinic in Florida is widely seen as a warning to a flourishing industry that has attracted huge numbers of patients, who pay thousands of dollars for unproven, risky procedures.
But with little regulatory oversight for the hundreds of clinics operating these lucrative businesses across the country, it’s too soon to tell how far the impact might reach.
The decision, by a federal court on June 3 , empowered the Food and Drug Administration to stop U.S. Stem Cell, a private clinic in Sunrise, Fla., from injecting patients with an extract made from their own liposuctioned belly fat.
 
 

Gov't Interference Is Hurting Docs, CMS Chief Tells AMA
Medicare for All is not a solution, Seema Verma says


CHICAGO -- Government interference has exacerbated the flaws in our healthcare system, but the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is working to correct that, CMS administrator Seema Verma told the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates here Monday.
Verma described the agency's efforts to relieve the administrative burden on physicians, promote value-based care, and allow physicians to return to their core mission: Taking care of patients. She zeroed in on the glut of paperwork, often driven by burdensome government regulations, which she said prevents physicians from spending the time they'd like with their patients and explains why "physician burnout ... is at an all-time high."


Interventional Pain Management Reports is an Open Access online journal, a peer-reviews journal dedicated to the publication of case reports, brief commentaries and reviews and letters to the editor. It is a peer-reviewed journal written by and directed to an audience of interventional pain physicians, clinicians and basic scientists with an interest in interventional pain management and pain medicine. 

Interventional Pain Management Reports is an official publication of the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (ASIPP) and is a sister publication of Pain Physician . Interventional Pain Management Reports Interventional Pain Management Reports is an open access journal, available online with free full manuscripts.  

The benefits of publishing in an open access journal that has a corresponding
print edition journal are:  
  • Your article will have the potential to obtain more citations.
  • Your article will be peer-reviewed and published faster than other journals.
  • Your article can be read by a potentially much larger audience compared with traditional subscription-only journals.  
  • Open Access journals are FREE to view, download and to print.

So submit today your:
  • Case Reports
  • Technical Reports
  • Editorials
  • Short Perspectives

2019 MIPS Reporting? Start Now.
MIPS-eligible clinicians must report a full year of data. Don’t fall behind – keep up with NIPM-QCDR.
 
MIPS 2019 has brought larger payment adjustments and greater reporting requirements, including a 365-day performance period for the Quality and Cost categories. The sooner you start your MIPS reporting for 2019, the better.
Sign up today to use ASIPP’s NIPM-QCDR for MIPS.
This powerful tool makes MIPS reporting easy through the use of our new patient-reported outcomes measures for 2019, which ease the burden on providers and reduces costly EMR integration.

Get started today at ASIPP.ArborMetrix.net

The University of Kentucky Made Progress Toward Achieving Program Goals for Enhancing Its Prescription Drug Monitoring Program

Why OIG Did This Review
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), opioids were involved in more than 48,000 deaths in 2017, and opioid deaths were 6 times higher in 2017 than in 1999. CDC has awarded funding to States to address the nonmedical use of prescription drugs and to address opioid overdoses. We are conducting a series of reviews of States that received CDC funding to enhance their prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs). We selected Kentucky for review because it had the second highest age-adjusted drug overdose fatality rate in the United States in 2013.
Our objectives were to (1) identify actions the University of Kentucky (the University) has taken to achieve Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) goals of improving safe prescribing practices and preventing prescription drug abuse and misuse and (2) ensure that it used Federal funds in accordance with Federal requirements.

OIG

CMS Seeks Public Input on Patients over Paperwork Initiative to Further Reduce Administrative, Regulatory Burden to Lower Healthcare Costs

Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking new ideas from the public on how to continue the progress of the Patients over Paperwork initiative. Since launching in fall 2017, Patients over Paperwork has streamlined regulations to significantly cut the “red tape” that weighs down our healthcare system and takes clinicians away from their primary mission—caring for patients. As of January 2019, CMS estimates that through regulatory reform alone, the healthcare system will save an estimated 40 million hours and $5.7 billion through 2021. These estimated savings come from both final and proposed rules.
The RFI on Reducing Administrative Burden to Put Patients over Paperwork invites patients and their families, the medical community, and other healthcare stakeholders to recommend further changes to rules, policies, and procedures that would shift more of clinicians’ time and our healthcare system’s resources from needless paperwork to high-quality care that improves patient health.

 
CMS


Pain Physician
May/June 2019 Issue Features

The May/June issue of Pain Physician features guidelines for sedation and fasting in patients undergoing IPM procedures as well as several systematic reviews, randomized trials and original research.

Guidelines
Alan D. Kaye, MD, PhD, Mark R. Jones, MD, Omar Viswanath, MD, Kenneth D. Candido, MD, Mark V. Boswell, MD, PhD, Amol Soin, MD, Mahendra Sanapati, MD, Michael E. Harned, MD, Thomas T. Simopoulos, MD, Sudhir Diwan, MD, Sheri L. Albers, DO, Sukdeb Datta, MD, Frank J.E. Falco, MD, and Laxmaiah Manchikanti, MD

Systematic Reviews
Chia-Shiang Lin, MD, Ying-Chun Lin, MD, Hsuan-Chih Lao, MD, and Chien-Chuan Chen, MD

Yola Moride, PhD, Danae Lemieux-Uresandi, Msc, Genaro Castillon, MD, Cristiano Soares de Moura, PhD, BPharm, Louise Pilote, MD, PhD, Mareva Faure, MSc, Sasha Bernartsky, MD, PhD

Shu-Wei Yeh, MD, Chien-Hsiung Hong, MD, Ming-Chieh Shih, MD, Ka-Wai Tam, MD, PhD, Yao-Hsien Huang, MD, and Yi-Chun Kuan, MD


Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force Report

The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 (CARA) required the Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force to develop the Report on Pain Management Best Practices: Updates, Gaps, Inconsistencies, and Recommendations - PDF *, which identified gaps or inconsistencies, and proposed updates to best practices and recommendations for pain management, including chronic and acute pain.
HHS Blog: Patient-Centered Care Is Key to Best Practices in Pain Management by Dr. Vanila M. Singh, MD, MACM
Background
HHS


Changing the Way Chronic Pain Is Categorized

The 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), which was submitted to the 72nd World Health assembly in late May 2019, includes chronic pain in the “Symptoms, Signs or Clinical Findings” category. 1 In the case this version receives official endorsement by participating countries, these nations will begin using the updated criteria in 2022. However, chronic pain should not be viewed merely as a symptom in the way that acute pain is and should instead be classified as a disease or disorder, according to a range of experts from US and international universities who authored an editorial published in Pain Medicine. 2
“Although the view of chronic pain as a disease in its own right has been debated in the past, accumulating evidence from research and clinical practice suggests that chronic or persistent pain meets the definition of a disorder, if not fully meeting the definition of disease at the moment,” noted the editorial authors. “Chronic pain results in a number of pathophysiological changes… that manifest in specific groups of symptoms and signs indicating pathology at various levels…. [and it] characteristically takes place independent from the physiological and protective role of nociception.”
 

Soaring insurance deductibles and high drug prices hit sick Americans with a ‘double whammy’

Wendy Matney hesitated to tell her family not to call 911.
“It seemed almost selfish to say, ‘Please don’t call because we can’t afford this,’” said the 39-year-old home health aide, who has a form of epilepsy that causes frequent, sometimes violent, seizures.
Matney has been to the hospital enough, though, to know a trip means thousands of dollars in bills under the family’s high-deductible health plan. And she and her husband — struggling with more than $20,000 in medical debt — can afford no more.
Hit with a hospital lawsuit over unpaid bills, the couple are declaring bankruptcy, effectively giving up hope of moving out of their trailer and buying a house.
“I’m losing everything because of this,” Matney said.
 


Department of Justice News

Florida Doctor Agrees to Pay $911,136.75 to Settle Alleged False Claims Act Violations Arising from Improper Financial Relationship with Drug Testing Laboratory
PITTSBURGH – Dr. Nathan Hanflink of Mt. Dora, Florida, agreed to pay $911,136.75 to settle allegations that he received improper payments for making referrals to Greensburg, Pennsylvania drug testing lab Universal Oral Fluid Laboratories, and caused false claims to be submitted to Medicare for drug testing services, United States Attorney Scott W. Brady announced today.
The settlement announced today resolves allegations that Dr. Hanflink referred Medicare patients to Universal Oral Fluid Laboratories (UOFL) for lab tests while engaged in a financial relationship with UOFL. Specifically, UOFL paid Dr. Hanflink to refer patients to the lab for drug tests; UOFL then submitted claims to Medicare for the drug testing services. The United States alleged that the financial arrangement between Dr. Hanflink and UOFL violated the physician self-referral law, commonly known as the Stark Law, and the Anti-Kickback Statute, giving rise to liability under the False Claims Act.
 
 
DOJ

State Society News 

July 12-14, 2019
GSIPP 2019 - 15th Annual Meeting & Pain Summit
The Cloister Hotel at Sea Island
Sea Island, GA
For more information, contact Karrie Kirwan at karrie@theassociationcompany.com or Tara Morrison at tara@theassociationcompany.com or 770-613-0932.

July 26-28, 2019
PAIN 2019
West Virginia Society of Pain Physicians
Loews Miami Beach, FL

August 9-10, 2019
Ohio and Kentucky Annual Meeting
Westin Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH

Send in your state society meeting news to Holly Long, hlong@asipp.org
ASIPP | Pain Physician Journal | Phone | Fax | Email